


Old Friend of Mine

by xiilnek



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-15
Updated: 2018-01-15
Packaged: 2019-03-05 03:09:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13378857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xiilnek/pseuds/xiilnek
Summary: Remember that quest? The Old Friend of Mine quest in Witcher 1, where one best friend met another after years of grieving? Remember how such a powerful premise came out about as emotional and moving as a wet fart?This fic should work, though, even if you never played the first game. 'Loved one comes back from the dead' is a pretty simple trope, after all, and the drama is the important thing.





	Old Friend of Mine

**Author's Note:**

> The basic dialogue is taken from the game itself, which means I can blame at least some of the excess ellipses on that. So credit goes to the people who wrote the scene in the first place. I just filled in what needed filling.

The poet’s eyes are even wider now, his skin’s gone pale. For a moment Geralt really wonders if his apparent old friend has stopped breathing but then he throws his arms out wide, gesturing behind Geralt.

“Shani, get back! I, I know how to deal with ghosts!” With that he starts patting himself down like he’s looking for something. It’s probably best, Geralt decides, to stop him before he finds it.

“Calm yourself, friend. I’m no ghost.”

“You--” In spite of his earlier bravado--or something that had wanted very badly to be bravado--Dandelion is leaning away from him, cringing. Anyone who looks like that tends to follow it up with a comment about Geralt’s eyes, maybe his hair, usually while making a sign to ward evil away, but the longer Geralt watches him the clearer it becomes that this man isn’t even thinking about that. He is looking toward Geralt’s eyes but his gaze doesn’t stop on them; it roams all over and it’s hard not to wonder what he’s seeing, what besides the awkward, too-white features Geralt remembers from his last glance in a mirror.

“Am I losing--” By reputation the great poet Dandelion has a very quick tongue. Right now that tongue seems to be having trouble. Or maybe, judging by the way he’s swallowing, the trouble’s in the throat.

Geralt waits. It isn’t any use to interrupt when people get like this.

“Am I losing my mind?” Dandelion manages to ask, then looks over Geralt’s shoulder--where, Geralt realizes, Shani must be, looking just as calm as Dandelion is not--and lets out a shocked little breath. “Is this-- Is this a joke? Shani?”

“It’s no joke.”

“But how? I saw… I, I saw…”

Finally, someone with answers. If this poet can calm himself down enough to give them. Maybe some prompting would be enough. “What did you see, Dandelion?”

“I-- She-- She told them to put you on a boat, and the unicorn, and Milva, Cahir and Angouleme and Yarpen and Zoltan, we all saw it-- saw you-- Oh, gods, if this isn’t true, if you aren’t you-- Oh, it was hard enough to write again the first time--”

If Geralt is going to find out more about his supposed death, the one man who knows anything useful is going to need to use complete sentences. Geralt steps forward, ignores the full-body flinch when he takes Dandelion’s shoulders, and looks directly into his eyes.

“I lost my memory,” he says, slowly and deliberately, making sure his tone is reasonable and his words are very clear. “But I want to know why everyone’s so surprised to see me alive. Tell me everything. Step by step.”

The poet’s long fingers clench on Geralt’s sleeves. He takes a gasping breath, blinking hard up into Geralt’s gaze. Geralt had thought he might try to break free or look away but he does neither of those things, looking up instead like he’s forgotten how to look away. His next breath is a little longer, a little slower, and as it comes his back straightens, his cringing uncurls until their shoulders are nearly of a width, their eyes nearly of a height. The breath he draws in this time is nearly steady.

“Five years ago,” Dandelion begins, in a voice near enough now to strong and clear that Geralt might believe the man in front of him performs regularly over rooms full of noisy people, “we were sitting in a tavern. We were eating escargot, drinking vodka, laughing with friends - it was a tavern like any other. And the mob, that wasn’t out of the ordinary either, not for the nonhuman district. But when people started screaming you-- ah…”

Dandelion’s fingers loosen on Geralt’s sleeves long enough to find the arms underneath them and then Geralt’s arms are gripped again, and gripped tight. Dandelion takes a breath, straightening himself once more.

“You rushed out. To scare them off, I assume. And then--”

Those poet’s lips are moving but no sound is coming out of them. “What?” Geralt prompts, finding himself leaning forward.

“Then you suffered a fatal wound to the stomach.” But then the illusion of a poet’s composure breaks again and Dandelion’s voice goes indignant, desperate. “It was a pitchfork! After everything you’ve done, everything we’ve done, every injury I’ve seen you survive, some bigot stabs you with a pitchfork and you-- and then you… and there was nothing we could do.”

Geralt waits a second, two seconds, three. Nothing more comes out. “Are you telling me everything?”

“We were all there!” The indignance hasn’t left; for a moment Dandelion seems to think Geralt is accusing him of lying. But this, too, could be useful. Maybe if Geralt could find some of those others who were ‘all there’, any Dandelion hasn’t yet named, he might get a clearer picture.

“All, meaning who?”

“You really don’t remember a thing…” Dandelion’s voice is quiet now, confused. He still doesn’t seem to have remembered how to look away from Geralt’s eyes. “I mean all of us. All your loved ones, your friends. We were all there to-- to see your spirit away.”

Geralt may not remember much but he knows enough to know how rare that is, at least in real life. When a man dies in real life he’s lucky if even a stranger’s around to see his body go, never mind his spirit. His lips pull very faintly into a grimace. “Sounds a bit like a ballad…”

“It’s the truth and nothing but! I’ve grieved for you for years and you insist on telling me I’m lying to you? Why would I lie? I’m never going to see you again!”

Dandelion’s eyes finally leave Geralt’s to settle on his stomach. His mouth drifts open and his face twists with distant horror; it doesn’t take much to guess what he’s seeing, and that vision seems to take all the fight out of him. He sags, and Geralt hurries to tighten his own grip again.

“Can it be you? Can it really be…” Once Dandelion’s hand unlocks itself it drifts down toward Geralt’s middle; his fingers stop just inches from it. His eyes are hidden by his downturned face and downturned lashes, his voice is nothing but a murmur. Geralt is struck by the odd urge to make him look back up.

“There are all sorts of things, you know,” the poet goes on, in that quiet voice. “A very wide variety of things which could produce an effect like this, if you know the literature. Illusions, tricks, curses, dreams. Dopple-- dopplegangers. That’s the one I-- And there’s no known way to tell, with one of those. No way to divine their true nature.”

The shoulders under Geralt’s grip shiver. “Can it be? But how can it be? There are a dozen ways to think you see the dead, you know, but none to see them breathing in front of you. Oh, Geralt, forgive me. Please forgive me. I still can’t believe you’re you. That you’re here.”

Geralt’s hands give the shoulders under them a little shake and that prompts Dandelion to look up, blinking slowly, dazed.

“Listen, Dandelion,” Geralt says in the sternest tone he dares to use. “I don’t have proof, because that’s impossible. I don’t remember… I’m afraid some things can’t be explained.”

Dandelion makes a noise that’s barely acknowledgement, a wordless hum, and Geralt gives his shoulders another shake before taking a breath and pulling himself in.

“Let’s sit down,” Geralt tries next and slides one hand around to Dandelion’s back, the better to shuffle him toward the little table. “That’s right, like that. Let’s just sit and have a drink like old friends. Time will tell who I am.”

“You’re right. We’ve been through too much together. I’d know...” Dazed as Dandelion’s voice still is it’s picking up speed. More life’s trickling into it the more words make it out; his mind has latched onto Geralt’s sorry attempt at reassurance as tightly as his hand has latched onto Geralt’s shirt.

He keeps that hand there as they sit. He keeps it wrapped up in Geralt’s shirt all through that night. Geralt sees no pressing reason to pry it away.

**Author's Note:**

> If there are any other scenes from that game you'd like to see redone from the 'Dandelion really should be more freaked about Geralt than he is' angle let me know. I love that shit, and just might be able to write something out of it.


End file.
